A CGD Note. In short: we want lots of investment in developing countries; it has to be financially sustainable; direct private project investment is very expensive, indirect private finance through multilateral development banks is a lot cheaper; so scaling through WB/AfDB/ADB/IADB is the sustainable (affordable) model.
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A co-authored Foreign Affairs piece with Scott Morris. The US should leave infrastructure to the World Bank and 'compete' bilaterally with China on human rather than physical capital.
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Co-authored CGD working paper with George Yang. We present data on the global diffusion of technologies over time, updating and adding to Comin and Mestieri’s "CHAT" database. We analyze usage primarily based on per capita measures and divide technologies into the two broad categories of production and consumption. We conclude that there has been strong convergence in use of consumption technologies with somewhat slower and more partial convergence in production technologies. This reflects considerably stronger global convergence in quality of life than in income, but we note that universal convergence in use of production technologies is not required for income convergence (only that countries are approaching the technology frontier in the goods and services that they produce). Dataset here.
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With Scott Morris in Foreign Policy. Only 3.9 percent of US foreign assistance is actually executed by recipient country governments. Take out Jordan and that's less than one percent. Pathetic and diplomatically counter-productive.
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A CGD Working Paper with Amanda Glassman and George Yang. At the start of 2022, profound inequities in the pace of access to COVID-19 vaccines and the level of coverage of COVID-19 vaccination remain, especially with regard to the world’s poorest countries. Yet despite this inequity, we find that global COVID-19 vaccine development and diffusion has been the most rapid in history, and this rapid scale-up is evident not only in high-income countries but also in upper- and lower-middle-income countries, home to the majority of the world’s population. This paper explores the historical record in the development and deployment of vaccines globally and puts the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in that context. Although far more can be done and should be done to speed equitable access to vaccines in the COVID-19 response, it is worth noting the revolutionary speed of both the vaccine development and the diffusion process, and the potential good news that this signals for the future of pandemic preparedness and response.
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Three years ago I wrote a 'novel'. Even got as far as getting an agent, and by golly my timing was good. It was a story about a new infectious disease spreading worldwide and the bungling US response. But in the end what the process demonstrated is that I should probably stick to non-fiction. If you can't sell umbrellas when the skies are fast-darkening, maybe it says something about your umbrellas. One editor's response from January 2020: "I thought the story had a certain resonance that might appeal to readers worried about real-world pandemics, but I didn’t always feel the plot had a fresh enough hook." That was kind: there are parts that I already cringe at having written. Still, I find it of minor personal historical interest, –not least that there were things I though were stretching plausibility in fiction that turned out to happen in real life a few months later. Here it is.
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For Foreign Policy. More equitable vaccination, new vaccines, more sustainable power, India will be the world's largest country, renewed economic growth and some hope for tigers.
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A GCD Policy Paper with Todd Moss and Mohamed Rali Badissy. The purpose of a nation’s power sector is to deliver reliable electricity at the lowest cost and for the greatest benefit. At the heart of any private electricity generation project is a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), a contract that contains key provisions such as price, payment stipulations, and obligations by the offtaker utility and/or host-government. Despite their significant effects on service quality and public finances, these contracts are often negotiated and signed in secret, with even the most basic terms shielded from the citizenry. This opacity has created risks and, in a growing number of cases, contributed to costly and damaging outcomes, such as overpayment, overcapacity, large debts, and grid instability. Drawing on examples from enhanced transparency in public budgets, sovereign debt, and extractive industries, we propose that governments agree to publish PPAs with any public sector obligation and that funders of private generation projects also agree to minimum disclosure standards. The objective is to create incentives for better practice, improve governance of the power sector, reduce transaction costs, and ultimately, to deliver cheaper and more reliable power for people and businesses. Transparency of PPAs would support the efforts of government policymakers and planners, investors, and development finance institutions to accelerate energy market development and to reap the benefits of open competition. Greater disclosure would also provide crucial information for citizens to hold their own governments accountable for the contracts they sign on behalf of the public.
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A CGD note. Donors vary considerably in how much they focus their spending on poorer countries. There are good reasons to believe that the utility-maximizing allocation is focused heavily on the world’s poorest countries, where an extra dollar is likely to make the greatest difference to welfare. However, donors may also allocate resources towards humanitarian causes: particularly seeing disadvantaged subgroups within countries including refugees fleeing violence or natural disasters as deserving particular attention. In addition, donors might believe their aid will achieve more in democratic or ‘well governed’ countries. Perhaps less legitimately, donors might prefer to allocate more aid to countries with closer political or economic ties: ex-colonies, allies, supporters in the UN, or trade partners. Similarly, they might choose to focus their aid on the ‘near abroad,’ as a tool of diplomacy or reflecting higher immediate self-interest. This paper uses some of the indicators highlighted as significant by that literature to examine if they can help explain the variation in poverty focus of donor aid.
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A CGD note. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is in the process of a considerable transformation, designed to grow its operations and expand their development impact. This paper discusses the rationale and elements of a continuing change agenda, focused on ensuring the IFC best serves its ultimate clients –people in developing countries.
Charles Kenny 